The California Digital Library has become a founding member of the DataCite Consortium.
Here's an excerpt from the press release:
One of today's most important priorities for academic scholarship and research is providing long-term access to datasets. Data are now seen as the building blocks of scholarship and research in the sciences and humanities. Scholars and archivists recognize the potential for increasing collaboration and synthesis when data are archived, published, and shared, forging the possibility for new discoveries built upon the research of others. . . .
DataCite offers an easy way to connect an article published in a scholarly journal with the underlying data and allows authors to take control of the management and distribution of their research. Additionally, DataCite provides the means for researchers to share and get credit for datasets; establish easier access to research data; increase acceptance of research data as legitimate, citable contributions to the scholarly record; and to support data archiving that permits results to be verified and re-purposed for future study.
A pragmatic first step towards managing, or "curating," data is to register the existence of datasets publicly and permanently. Mirroring accepted publishing practice, DataCite's services make it easy for data producers to obtain permanent catalog records and persistent identifiers that are visible through familiar mechanisms, such as library systems, CrossRef and search engines. . . .
Stephen P. Miller, head of the Geological Data Center, Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego says, "It is critical for research community data operations to keep in close communications with DataCite, maintaining a forum to discuss challenges and to share resources and innovative tools. For example, the ‘Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R)' project was recently launched to capture all routine underway data on U.S. oceanographic research vessels, approximately 500 expeditions per year, conducted by 18 independent operating institutions. In recent years there has been a change in the cultural patterns in the marine science and other communities. Data are being exchanged, and re-used, more than ever. Much of the re-use is accomplished without the direct involvement of the original data collector… It is now a general practice to combine data from various online resources even before you go to sea, and to submit your data to a repository for others to use after returning."
In addition to the CDL, the DataCite consortium includes the German National Library of Science and Technology, the British Library, the Library of the ETH Zurich, the French Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the Technical Information Center of Denmark, the Dutch TU Delft Library, Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, the Australian National Data Service and Purdue University.